Special Features | The Mandarin

Just 16 minutes of sleep loss can harm work concentration the next day

by The Conversation

Have you had a less-than-stellar performance review lately? Do you daydream, or are you making bad decisions? It might not be about your job but about your sleep.

Planning for climate extremes in global farming

by The University of Melbourne

Climate change means the frequency and severity of climate extremes is predicted to further increase in most regions worldwide. It’s important to understand how climate extremes interact with agricultural yields, to what extent crop yields are influenced by climate extremes and how these interactions differ between agricultural regions.

Understanding demand to prevent market failures in the NDIS

by The Mandarin

How can the NDIA help service providers make informed business choices, and stimulate their participation in the scheme, when real market data on demand is unavailable for this newly-forming disability sector?

Biology is partly to blame for high rates of mental illness in women – the rest is social

by The Conversation

Depression and anxiety are known to affect around one in five people, but depression occurs twice as often in women as in men. And when it comes to major depressive disorder, almost all population studies conducted to date have reported more women than men experienced major depression in their lifetime.

Lawyers, guns, money – and politics, part 2

by The Mandarin

The second article in a three-part series on the formulation of Australia’s firearms policy; across the decades, Australia remains unified on its national gun laws.

Controlling the costs of whole-genome sequencing in cancer care

by The University of Melbourne

Australia already has an ecosystem that is globally recognised for one of the best cancer outcomes worldwide. But there is still room to improve value-based cancer services and develop world-leading care pathways that benefit both the patient and the Australian economy.

The complex intersection between aid facilities and aid effectiveness

by The Mandarin

Are aid facilities having a positive or negative impact on aid effectiveness? The increasing reliance on facilities has become controversial in the Australian aid program.

What inquiry-based learning is and how it helps prepare children for the real world

by The Conversation

Inquiry is part of human nature, but one can benefit from learning how to be a good inquirer. This includes learning skills such as how to ask and answer questions, solve problems and conduct investigations and research.

We need tomorrow’s teachers today

by The Mandarin

The fourth industrial revolution is upon us, and massive disruptions in the nature of employment mean many of the things our children are learning today will be obsolete by the time they enter the workforce. Australia’s education system is in dire need of an overhaul, one that starts with those on the frontlines – our teachers.

The 2019 Budget provides opportunity for innovation through data sharing

by The Mandarin

How can the budget process provide an opportunity to genuinely disrupt the way the public sector performs? By quarantining a proportion of funds within all new expenditure to spend on approaching the policy development or project delivery using data integration.

A guide to setting up a What Works evidence centre and surmounting its challenges

by The Mandarin

As What Works centres mature and grow in the UK, and the movement spreads internationally, there will be more lessons to be learned and shared. Jonathan Breckon and Dr Robyn Mildon outline some common issues for anybody setting up a new evidence centre.

The perils of caretaker period: alleged breach by DAWR used to justify judicial inquest

by Stephen Easton

The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is now in line for extra scrutiny along with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, if there is a change of government, after intervening in the politically charged controversy over a certain $79 million water buy-back during caretaker period.

House prices and demographics make death duties an idea whose time has come

by The Conversation

It’s hard to tell what’s happening to the distribution of wealth in Australia. Since death duties went, Australian income inequality has climbed, with the standard measure (known as the Gini coefficient) climbing from 0.27 to 0.32 between 1982 and 2016 on a scale where a result of zero would mean income was equally shared and a result of 1 would mean one person earned all the income.

Lawyers, guns, money – and politics, part 1

by The Mandarin

The first article in a three-part series on the formulation of Australia’s firearms policy; Australia finds itself at a gun-law crossroads after the Port Arthur mass murder.

The Centre for Strategy and Governance shares its views (succinctly and politely) on the APS Review

by Verona Burgess

What do former mandarins think about the Australian Public Service Review so far? Quite a lot, and not all of it is flattering.